White Noise

Space Engineering team from National Technical University of Athens

About

White Noise is a space engineering team that was founded by NTUA students in 2017.
Our main goal is to compete in engineering contests and share our passion about space. In our first year, we designed and manufactured DrillSat that won the 1st prize in CanSat In Greece competition.
This year, our team consists of 16 members and is currently conducting research on the satellites that will compete in Cansat Competition and CanSat In Greece.

Projects

DrillSat

1st place in CanSat In Greece 2018

Our team's mission was inspired from a number of real life projects in extraterrestrial exploration like the curiosity rover, the rosetta space probe, asteroid mining projects, etc. All those projects revolve around analysing the surface and soil of planets or comets, encountering harsh conditions. Our goal was to build a sensor for estimating soil moisture concentration and monitor it over time, in a supposed target planet, in order to further evaluate whether it could eventually host plants and support human activity. After a successful landing with the parachute, DrillSat is able to use its leg mechanism and rise into a position from which it can dig its drills to the ground and measure the conductivity between the two drills, which is related to the moisture of the soil examined.

CanSat Competition 2019

Cansat to be launched at Texas, USA on June 15, 2019

The 2019 mission of CanSat Competition will explore the use of auto-gyro descent control of a science payload when released from the launch vehicle. The CanSat we are currently designing consists of two parts, the science payload and the container to protect the science payload as it is deployed from the rocket. Once the CanSat is deployed from the rocket, the CanSat shall descend using a parachute. At 450 meters, the container shall release science auto-gyro payload. As the science payload descends under auto-gyro control, the payload shall transmit to our ground station, telemetry which shall include sensors to track altitude, external temperature, battery voltage, GPS position, pitch and roll and auto-gyro blade spin rate. As a secondary objective, our team is designing a small 2-axis gimbal that will support a camera at the bottom part of the science payload.

CanSat In Greece 2019

Our initial idea originated from a NASA mission searching for small inhabitable planets. Inspired by this mission, we thought that the idea of a self-sufficient and low budget probe able to transfer information about the conditions on an unexplored planet. Our CanSat targets not only to measure the quantities of oxygen, moisture and carbon dioxide, but to make a 3D mapping of the ground, in order to obtain a complete view of the planet’s surface. Aiming to gather high definition images from the cameras onboard, we will construct a camera stabilization system. Additionally, we are designing a mechanism, for our ground station, that can change our antenna's orientation to constantly track our satellite. As a result, we will have continuous data collection without the need of an operator.